


mile after mile (mile after mile)

by shella688



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, The Bifrost Incident - The Mechanisms (Album), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (No other characters die), All Aboard the Viking Space Train!, Canonical Character Death, Eldritch, F/F, Gen, Public Transportation, That deserves a warning of its own tbf, the events of TBI but set in Discworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27777088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shella688/pseuds/shella688
Summary: "... bloody wizards. They need to learn that just because theycando something doesn't mean theyshould…"Odin, Head of Locomotive Magics and Strange Whirring Things at the Unseen University, is building a train, powered by magic and faster than anything dreamt of before.Sigyn is the leader of the student rebellion trying to figure out what really happened to her girlfriend Loki and get justice.Vimes is having to deal with a set of prisoners, with manners and dress utterly alien to him, but nevertheless able to annoy him no end....is this seeming familiar to anyone else?
Relationships: Loki & Thor (The Bifrost Incident), Loki/Sigyn (The Bifrost Incident), Marius von Raum & Ivy Alexandria & Raphaella la Cognizi, Nobby Nobbs & Fred Colon, Sigyn & Thor (The Bifrost Incident)
Comments: 75
Kudos: 37





	1. Newspapers and Niceties

Public transport is a miracle. Affordable, reliable, clean, on time - all words that stay well clear of the concept. They say you haven't lived if you haven't spent a thoroughly unpleasant fourth five minutes on a bus packed with strangers, all of whom manage to get in each others' ways without even trying.

It comes in a whole range of forms too, depending on the situation. From the horse drawn carriages in the streets of Ankh-Morpork, to litters carried by upwards of ten people in the Agatean Empire, to the ferries going up and down the River Kneck . The one thing in common, however, is the lone traveller stood at the departure point, swearing as they realise the promise of transport arriving every five minutes is more of a rarely seen, best case scenario

So far, no-one's ever tried human sacrifice to make the trains run on time. You can't deny it seems tempting sometimes though.

  
  


*

  
  


Havelock Vetinari, Patrician and occasional benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morpork, couldn't deny that public transport was a good idea in theory. It was right up there with flip flops, beginning to learn the violin, and roadworks, in terms of ideas that seem great right up until the moment they are implemented.

He paused in his reading of the newspaper and raised an eyebrow.

"The Press are claiming now that the rail company is building a train that'll take passengers from Ankh-Morpork to the Hub in three hours rather than three days. The Ratatosk Express, they're calling it."

Commander Vimes of the City Watch stared at a point slightly to the left of Vetinari's left ear.

"Is that so, sir."

"A more crass man than I might say they've gone off the rails."

The Patrician watched Vimes carefully for his reaction. Nothing except a slight flinch. He hummed.

“Apparently they’re working with wizards too, powering the train using their spells and pointy hats and what have yous.”

This time, Vimes dug his fingers into the palms of his hands in an effort not to respond.

“One wizard in particular. Have you come across Odin Borsdóttir? Head of, I believe, Locomotive Magics And Strange Whirring Things at the Unseen University. I hear she's brilliant, though a nightmare to work with."

Vimes inhaled sharply.

“Anyway, that's all that seems to be of interest in today's issue. Did you have something you wanted to ask me?”

“Are you wanting me to investigate Odin and her Express, sir?"

Vetinari made a face that might have been described as "benign and innocent" by someone who didn't know him.

"Of course not, Commander. I wouldn't dream of getting involved in Watch business. I was merely commenting on the events of the day. It's good to keep oneself informed, I find."

Vimes was not a man who could be read like a book. You couldn't flick through the pages of his self, glancing over his thoughts and emotions like an index, arriving at a conclusion about his motives like opening to where the bookmark was. Reading Vimes was like being given a piece of sheet music you’ve never seen before, and being told that in exactly five minutes you will have to play it on an instrument you were unaware even existed until now.

That’s to say - it just requires a bit of creativity and lots of trial and error.

And Vetinari had had  _ plenty  _ of trials.

“I assume you know the way out by now?”

Vimes clenched his jaw.

“Is that it?”

Vetinari placed his newspaper down neatly on the desk. He removed his glasses and wiped them carefully with a cloth before putting them back on. He straightened the pen lying next to a notepad, which he also adjusted to align with the edge of the desk.

Then, when the silence was razor-sharp, he spoke.

“Were you expecting anything more?”

Vimes exhaled slowly, spun and marched out stiffly.

Vetinari allowed himself a slight smile as he noted down the need to call the builder in again, approximately five seconds before a muffled thud told him that Vimes had just punched the wall outside the office.

He couldn’t wait to see what Vimes’ investigation would uncover.


	2. Speeches and Spectacles

Watch Liaison Officer Colon was sat at the main desk of the Watchhouse. He was good at this - he could sit there for hours, doing nothing of much importance. In fact, Vimes had promoted him to Watch Liaison Officer specifically to ensure that he  _ stayed  _ sat at his desk, doing nothing of much importance and, therefore, not able to cock anything up. No-one could actually say what a Watch Liaison Officer did - not least Colon himself - but if he got to stay inside warmth and got paid for it well- he wasn’t going to complain.

It was unfortunate, then, that Vimes was about to make him go stand outside, in the winter, to listen to Odin’s speech and report back anything suspicious.

“Why me?” he started to ask, but one look at Vimes’ face told him that the answer would almost certainly be “because I said so”.

Watch Liaison Officer Colon was good at sitting inside, but he was  _ very  _ skilled at all forms of conflict avoidance.

“Oi Nobby!” he shouted over, and Nobby quickly put the petty cash tin he’d been nosing in back on the shelf.

“Yeah sarge?”

“That’s Liaison Officer to you, Nobby.”

“Sure thing, sarge. What did you want?”

Colon tried to turn to Vimes, to share the sort of Look people who like to think they have power share when the subordinates are being difficult. But Vimes was staring intently at a point in space, probably deep in thought, and looking to be about two bad words away from going spare.

It was those wizards, Colon reckoned. Nothing put you in a bad mood faster than dealing with a large group of powerful people who thought wearing pointy hats was a personality trait.

“Odin - that wizard Odin, you know? - is giving a speech, and we need to watch it on account of us working for public interest.

“And why are we  _ really  _ going, sarge?”

Colon and Nobby shared a Look, the sort the regular workers share when their boss is being difficult, but when they don’t want to argue because it’s really quite nice having a steady income.

“Ah.” Nobby nodded thoughtfully. “Now?”

Colon cast a longing look at his comfortable chair behind the desk.

“Yes, now.”

*

The rain was coming down in a steady cold drizzle, and the wind was the sort that would get through even the warmest coat. It was unpleasant weather, best suited for staying inside and keeping warm.

Nevertheless, a large crowd had gathered to watch Odin’s speech. The people of Ankh-Morpork love a good bit of street theatre, and many of them had brought vegetables to throw in case the speech itself wasn’t humorous enough. Or just to throw as soon as she came on - nearly everyone had a friend who’s brother-in-law’s grandpa had to move house after the wizards’ magic had caused the lavatory to start glowing purple and the flower beds to gain sentience.

Wizards, it was fair to say, weren’t held in very high esteem by much of the populace, and so having a few members of the City Watch on the scene would hopefully discourage anyone from getting  _ too  _ rowdy.

Nobby and Colon huddled together in a doorway nearby, wishing very much that they could be discouraging rowdiness from somewhere where they  _ weren't  _ getting rained on.

“When d’you think she’s coming on, sarge?” Nobby asked, trying to rub feeling back into his cold fingers.

“Soon I hope.”

Colon craned his neck over the crowds to try and see anything. There were some stands set up already, selling food and drink of questionable origin, but other than that, nothing.

“Maybe she’s being fashionably late.”

Nobby considered his mental image of a wizard - long robes in garish colours, shiny starts badly sewn on to any clear patch of fabric and, of course, a pointy hat.

“Wizards can be fashionable?”

“She’s being  _ dramatically  _ late then, if you’re going to be like that," he huffed, leaning his head back against the wall. Then he started, elbowing Nobby sharply in the ribs.

“ _ Ouch,  _ sarge.”

“Shush- she’s here!”

There was a smattering of applause as Odin came on stage, plus more than a few boos, because, as already stated, the commonly-held view is that wizards should stop getting in the way of normal people just trying to live their lives  _ without  _ the dog turning into a pile of goop.

She looked every inch a wizard. Her robe was long, red, and made of velvet that was getting  _ ruined  _ by the rain. The silver foil stars stuck all over were peeling off slightly, and the tip of her tall pointy hat was drooping to one side.

And as for her speech…

Put it this way. 

If you took every speech ever uttered on the Disc, and chopped each one up into sentences, then put those sentences in a big hat, and asked a child who couldn’t count yet to take out five sentences, then took the seven sentences that they’d taken out and put them in a random order, then repeated this process until you had a speech, well-

It would  _ still  _ be better than Odin’s.

She droned on and ond about her train, not even a banging guitar line in the background to add some flair to it.

The crowd, bored as they were, couldn’t even muster the energy to throw any of the fruit they’d brought - and Ankh-Morporkians could usually muster the energy to throw some fruit at  _ anything. _

Nobby hummed.

Then he sighed.

Then, when his friend still didn’t acknowledge him, he said:

“What’s the big deal about this Odin anyway?”

Colon gave him a side-eye.

“Sam  _ told  _ us before we left, Nobby.”

Nobby thought about this for a moment.

“Yeah, so what did he say?” he asked, with a dangerous edge to his voice.

“Well-” 

Colon paused. “Well-” he tried again.

“You weren’t listening either, were you sarge?”

“Well, she’s a wizard, isn't she? Always meddling with quantum, those wizards.”

Nobby was on the verge of asking Colon to explain ‘quantum’, when something else came to him.

“Wouldn’t she be a witch?”

“No, ‘cause you see-”

Colon drew himself up to his full height - all five foot six of it - and puffed his chest out. When he spoke, he sounded incredibly smug.

“People only  _ think _ witches and wizards are gender specific on account of all the stereotypin’. Anyone of any gender can be either if they have an  _ aptitude  _ for it.”

“Blimey sarge.”

Colon nodded his agreement.

“Blimey indeed, my pro-tay-gee.”

“What’s that sarge?”

“Ah, see  _ that  _ word, Nobby, means student in Quirm. I heard t-”   
  


But Nobby had stopped listening.

“‘M glad she’s not a witch sarge.” he interrupted, largely to himself. “Don’t like witches. They’re using their magicking to turn the frogs gay.”

“Are they now.” Colon said, coldly, not pleased at the change in topic, especially now it meant he couldn't show off.

Nobby nodded vigorously.

“Tom what owns the oyster stand told me so.”

“Did all these witches and their magicking turn you bi too, Nobby?”

“I’m not a frog sarge,” Nobby said reproachfully.


	3. Ovations and Orang-utans

When Odin finished speaking, it took a good few minutes for anyone to notice. They did so with a shuffling and a groaning and the general sense that the crowd was waking up from a collective impromptu nap, with Odin’s silence ringing out just as loudly as an alarm clock.

Nobby elbowed Colon, who was snoring, his head drooping down against his chest.

He snorted awake, nearly toppling over.

“Wh- What?” he mumbled. “‘M awake!” he added, the way that people who are, in fact, awake don’t usually tend to do.

Nobby elbowed him again for good measure.

“Odin’s finally shut up. Look- she doesn’t even have any tomatoes on her or nothing.”

The two looked over to the stage, when Odin was departing with all the grace and poise of someone who  _ doesn’t  _ have thrown tomatoes matted in their hair. It was quite disappointing, really.

“What’re you going to tell Vimes, sarge?” Nobby asked. Note the careful use of “you” here, instead of “we”. Nobby had plenty of experience phrasing his questions to ensure that he was as far away from having to do work as possible, and this was no exception. Over his lifetime, Nobby had found that things ran much more smoothly when “we” weren't involved at all. 

"What  _ we  _ are going to tell Sam is," replied Colon, who'd been friends with Nobby for many years now, "is exactly what happened. Odin's speech was boring, pointless, and there wasn't even any good fruit throwing to liven it up a bit."

Nobby kicked at a puddle.

"Do you reckon she had any good foreshadowing in there?"

Colon answered with all the confidence of someone who's entirely wrong but no-one's had the heart to tell them yet.

"Nah - you see how the light was shining on her? A classic example of backshadowing that was."

In a surprising turn of events for anyone who knew Fred Colon, he  _ was  _ correct, although with the wrong justification. Odin's speech didn't have any good foreshadowing in. It didn't even have any  _ bad  _ foreshadowing. She was too busy crowing about how good her train was to even  _ consider  _ giving a subtle nod to how events might turn out.

But if she  _ had  _ had a good speech, if Nobby and Colon had fallen down the other leg of the Trousers of Time, maybe if Odin had had a banging guitar line in the background, maybe  _ then  _ there would have been some foreshadowing in there somewhere.

Shame how these things happen.

  
  


*

And the Ratatosk Express launched.

Those onboard, the invited guests milling around and the staff keeping out of their way, had some notable differences from the crowd that had come to watch Odin's speech.

For one, everyone present was a wizard, either employed at or a student at the Unseen University. It's hard to make fun of someone's outfit when you yourself are wearing something equally silly, if not more so. The assembled wizards didn’t even  _ pretend  _ to be paying attention either, talking among themselves as Odin rambled on in the background, presumably about her train, yet again.

The Dean and the Lecturer in Recent Runes were discussing the best way to use a fireball to cook your chicken in a tenth of the time it would normally take in the oven. The Chair of Indefinite Studies was glueing some stars back onto his robe. Archchancellor Ridcully was explaining to the Bursar, enthusiastically and with large gestures, how trains actively damaged the health of those who rode them, and how it was always better to walk places and get the old heart pumping again. The Bursar, for his part, was staring into space with a slightly glazed expression, occasionally getting slapped in the face by a particularly energetic gesture.

The Librarian (an orang-utan) was eating a banana.

And Ponder Stibbons, Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic and the closest person to a “sensible wizard” you could get, was growing more and more distressed as his calculations produced some rather concerning outputs.

“The density of magic is far too high for such a relatively small train!”

“Ook.”

“If the train itself doesn’t break down under the force of all the magic powering it, it’s almost certain to attract the attention of  _ Things _ , and the Archchancellor  _ knows  _ what happened last time Things came through to our world.”

“Ook?”

“Exactly! If the Express arrives at the Hub in one piece I’ll- I’ll eat my hat. If I had Hex here maybe I could run a few calculations through it, try and figure out  _ when  _ things might go wrong but…”

“Ook!”

“No, I don’t have any more bananas.”

“ _ Ook. _ ”

“You  _ know  _ that’s not how Cole’s Transmutation Spell works. Ask one of the staff if they have any.”

“Ook.”

“If we all get eaten by Things from the Dungeon Dimensions it won’t matter if you get your banana or not!”

Ponder fell into the category of people who were far more authoritative and firm when suddenly under a large deal of stress. Whilst under normal circumstances he might have been more polite, currently a solid 80% of his brain was running wildly in a panic as the remaining 20% tried to figure out a way out of this situation he’d found himself in.

The Librarian huffed and knuckled off in search of a member of staff. Or, more accurately, a student who had been told that volunteering for this job would lower their end of year exam grade boundaries by 20%, and that they’d get a free meal out of it.

Unsurprisingly, Odin had no difficulty finding enough students to fill all the roles needed.

“Ook?” the Librarian asked. This was directed at a student wearing the uniform of a waiter, who was sat huddled in a corner clutching her head.

“Ook?” he asked again, when she didn’t respond, poking her gently.

She flinched, staring up at the Librarian with wide, scared eyes.

“Who am I?” she muttered to him urgently. “Who am I who is she  _ who am I? _ ”

The Librarian backed away in concern. Surely she’d know who she is? Surely she’d know that-

He blinked as the realisation stuck him.

_ That was Loki. _

Everyone knew about Loki, and those who didn’t pretended like they did so as to not feel left out. She had been one of the most talented wizards in her year, and had even been working with Odin on the Ratatosk Express project right at its inception. And then… well, a more crass man than the Patrician might have said that things went off the rails from this point.

The railway company wanted too much done in too short a time. Odin was keen to comply, always pushing ahead - health and safety be damned. Loki had urged caution, trying to encourage quality work over quick results. The two had argued fiercely and often.

Then one day Loki vanished.

The official line was that she’d been expelled over unprofessional behaviour, but no-one believed that, not least her girlfriend Sigyn, who launched a student-led rebellion shortly after hearing the news. Her and her fellow insurgents inconvenienced university staff by demanding the lecturers show up to class for once, holding spirited and informed debates in the corridors, and by preventing five of the university’s eight daily meals reaching the Great Hall. They’d never been able to pin anything firmly on Sigyn though, preventing her joining Loki in exile.

But Loki was  _ here,  _ still staring at the Librarian in fear, possibly, or confusion, or both, muttering to herself over and over.

And the part of the Librarian not currently wondering at where the next banana was coming from couldn’t help but think -

_ Why? _


	4. Cooks and Covert Operations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been ready to go for some days now but. (lies on the floor and is taken over by moss) yknow?

The Librarian resolved to keep a close eye on Loki. She didn’t look to be capable of starting anything, but you never knew with these student types.

Well- keep an eye on her anyway. A “close” eye is, when you’re a 300lb orang-utan, quite concerning to be on the receiving end of.

Well- maybe occasionally he’d take a glance across the train compartment to make sure she hadn’t moved. He did still, after all, want another banana, and sitting around staring at just the one student wouldn’t help matters.

Well- maybe he’d go round and talk to the other staff, and if he remembered to check back in on Loki then that would be a pleasant side effect. 

“Go talk to someone in one of the other carriages,” said a student/staff member pretending like she wasn’t listening at the door to Odin’s personal observation deck.

“Have you asked in the kitchen?” said a staff member/student mixing together a frankly concerning number of colourful liquids, before downing the concoction in one go.

“Sorry, sir, no monkeys allowed in the kitchen,” said the unlucky student guarding the kitchen door- and all at once the carriage fell silent as many wizards did their best impressions of people not intently watching the drama about to go down. The student clearly hadn’t been at the University long enough to learn that only people with a sincere wish to have their arms unscrewed at their shoulders called the Librarian a monkey.

“Ook?” he asked, stepping closer.

The carriage drew in a collective breath.

The Librarian stepped closer again-

The student, looking around, realised they were suddenly the centre of an awful lot of unwanted attention-

The Librarian raised an arm-

The watching wizards flinched-

He patted them on the head gently, pushing them to one side.

The wizards let out a sigh of relief, and the student suddenly felt very lucky to be in one piece.

“Ook,” he said, sympathetically, entering the kitchen anyway.

The kitchen was full, like all kitchens are, of shouting people, hot pans being carried all over the place and always wherever you happen to be walking, and grumpy chefs who consider the presence of other people in their kitchen a personal insult. By the looks of it, they were preparing for pre-lunch - the fourth meal in the day, and a relatively light one at that, clocking in at a mere three courses. The Librarian vaulted a bubbling soup pot and dodged around the feet of someone carrying a plate stacked alarmingly high with mashed potato. He looked around for anything even vaguely fruit-shaped, but the view shared by most wizards was that a healthy meal was one that contained the three food groups of carbs, starch and fat, and that the only good vegetable was one boiled halfway to hell and back.

He huffed, sitting himself down on the floor right there, students be damned.

“Can I help you?” asked a gruff voice from above him. “Or would you mind having a Moment somewhere less in the way?” There was no doubt that the voice wasn’t just talking about any old period of time, but a capital-M Moment

“Ook,” the Librarian replied, sullenly. “ _ Ook, _ ” he said again, to really emphasise how tragic it was that he, an upstanding, respected member of the faculty, was incapable of acquiring even the one measly banana.

“They get funny about their vegetables. And fruit.”

The voice audibly rolled his eyes.

“Ook, ook,” he said, because even if the voice had a point, he was still right- Loki  _ hadn’t  _ been this difficult about it. Admittedly, it was because she’d had something happen to her and her memories, but even  _ so. _

“Wait- Loki? Loki’s  _ here _ ?”

Something in the voice’s tone - something in the way he sounded confused and angry and hurt and betrayed all at once - finally got the Librarian to look up and acknowledge the face behind the voice.

It was no-one he recognised. The real world tends to be like that. 

He was some student, maybe Loki’s age, easily clearing six foot tall, and with the kind of stare that would make a snake’s eyes water. Why was he so interested in Loki though?

“Ook?”

The man pinched the bridge of his nose.

“We were friends, I guess, before the train. But-” the man sounded like he’d forgotten the Librarian was there “-it was a mistake. I  _ told  _ her. I  _ told  _ her not to work with Odin, to leave it be, that something bad would happen, and look what Odin did to her!”

He looked to be about to shake the Librarian, but remembered himself in time.

“And now Loki’s here?”

“...ook.”

The man shook his head furiously.

"Unbelievable. Sköll!" he called out, and Sköll, presumably, paused their fish filleting and looked up.

"Yeah Thor?"

"Going to talk to old lady Odin. Don't wait up."

Sköll shrugged.

"Sure thing Thor."

The man - Thor, although that meant nothing to the Librarian - didn't spare either of them a glance as he stormed out, muttering angrily as he went. The Librarian, knuckling rapidly after him so as not to miss any of the drama, couldn't quite make it out, but it seemed to be intense.

  
  


*

  
  


Thor didn’t just walk, he  _ stormed. _

He stormed out of the kitchen, he stormed down the carriages, he stormed into Odin’s private room and slammed the door firmly shut behind him without even a look behind.

The Librarian exchanged a glance with the same student who had been pretending not to be listening at the door from earlier.

“Ook?” he ventured.

She brushed a long dreadlock over her shoulder and held out a hand.

“I’m Sigyn, actually. Pleased to meet you.”

He took it, shaking it gently by his standards - which is to say that he  _ didn’t  _ shake her arm clean off. 

"Ook. Ook?"

Sigyn sat on the floor, leaning her head back against the door. The muffled sounds of an argument on the other side could be heard, if you listened closely.

"Why am I here? In the metaphorical sense?"

She caught sight of the Librarian's face and laughed.

"I know, I know. 'Why am I here, right now, on the train, and am I planning anything that you, an upstanding member of staff, should know about?' Well-"

The Librarian sat down next to her - it sounded like she was building up to tell a good story. Behind the door, he could vaguely hear Thor shouting about….

Intimate relationships with Odin and the Ratatosk Express?

He stopped listening.

"Well," Sigyn began again. "I think Loki was onto something, with the train. And not only that, but she was a victim of circumstances that were never going to allow her to get anywhere. All of us are, I'd say."

Sigyn had a quiet way of speaking, but the glint of determination in her was like steel. 

"We want the truth. I know what the professors think of me, our group, but we do what we do because this whole system is built to make us fail. When was the last time a professor actually showed up to a lecture?”

"Oook-" 

“No shut up, I'm not an 'allegory best confined to subtext' I'm annoyed.

“You make us pay thousands of dollars a year to attend, give us musty old textbooks, don’t bother showing up to teach, and then it turns out you can expel someone when they point out that, just maybe, safety regulations are a  _ good  _ thing.”

"Have you seen all the staff? They're all with me, each and every one of them.”

She grinned, the kind of grin that said, whilst she might not  _ want _ to commit any crimes to achieve her goals, well, the City Watch was a rather long way away, wasn’t it? And out here, surrounded by nothing but landscape, who was going to complain if one or two confidential university documents got shared around, or who would notice some good old fashioned threatening here and there? Was it going to be  _ you _ ?

“We're going to get to the bottom of this, and I'd suggest you don't get in our way. You-"

Sigyn stopped. Some things you don’t notice until they’re gone, and then the empty space is more obvious than the thing ever was.

The room behind them was, very suddenly, very quiet, the silence ringing out so loud it was deafening.

She pushed herself up off the ground hurriedly.

“Speaking of getting in the way,  _ now  _ would be a good time to move from in the door. Yes, now. Look- do you  _ want _ to get hit by-”

The door slammed open.


	5. Meetings and Memories

Two burly security officers - definitely not students, not unless the university had suddenly begun weightlifting courses - dragged between them a furious Thor.

He wasn’t raging anymore - he was long past that point. His anger had solidified, hardened, frozen into something just as deadly but coming from the opposite direction. It was a good job for Odin that looks couldn't kill.

Thor twisted in their grasp, straining round to look at Sigyn and the Librarian.

"Loki's here. Loki's here she-" he gasped out, before a huge hand clamped over his mouth.

It was enough though.

_ Loki's here _ .

The words repeated themselves over and over in Sigyn's head. She forgot about the plan, about all the timings she'd so carefully laid out, because  _ Loki's here _ .

Loki who had disappeared that night and she hadn't even been able to say goodbye. 

It was all quite cliche, perhaps. But Sigyn had never thought they'd see each other again, not until she'd graduated, and who knew how long that'd be.

She had to find her.

"I'm going to find her," she said, looking over at the Librarian. He seemed pretty dazed after getting smacked with a heavy metal door, but orang-utans are sturdy creatures. He'd be fine.

Sigyn ran.

*

  
  


Loki hadn't moved since the Librarian had seen her earlier.

It wasn't just that she hadn't gotten up and walked off anywhere, but she physically _hadn't_ _moved,_ not to push her hair out of her eyes, not to wipe away the tears of pain that streaked down her face.

Sigyn approached her like you might a wounded animal - slowly and carefully, her hands held in front of her to show that they were empty.

"Loki?" she whispered, so quiet she almost didn't speak at all. 

"Loki my love, can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Nothing and then-

Then Loki raised her head, and their eyes met, and something awful broke inside of Sigyn.

Loki's eyes were empty, uncomprehending. There was no recognition there when she looked at Sigyn, no sign of the love they'd shared for each other, no hint that she even understood what was happening.

There was only fear.

Sigyn reached out, intending to take her girlfriend's hand, but she faltered when Loki flinched away.

"What did Odin  _ do  _ to you?"

At the name of the wizard in charge of this whole project, Loki jerked.

"Odin. Odin. I know that name, why do I know that name?" she muttered frantically. "Odin, the train, the magic in the engines and the magic in the tracks and the magic twisting inside her. Odin, Odin, why do I know Odin?"

Loki looked desperately at Sigyn.

"Who am I that I know her? Who are you that you know me?"

Sigyn's hands clenched into fists. How dare Odin do this. How  _ dare  _ she, and think she could get away with it. She swore, in that moment, that she wouldn’t lose Loki, not again. As her nails dug into the palms of her hands, she promised that she’d make Odin pay.

Slowly, she exhaled, then she took all her rage, all her pain, all her heartbreak, and forced it down somewhere where Loki couldn’t see it. Besides, no point in using up all her anger before finding Odin.

“You are Loki Laufeyssdóttir,” she began, like she was telling the story of her girlfriend to the listening universe. “You were-  _ are _ , you are one of the best wizards in our year. You fought to defend Mordred’s Conjecture of Sun Elongation, you’re helpful, you’re kind, but you’re never too proud to give someone what they deserve. Gods-”

Sigyn laughed as she wiped her eyes.

“One time you threatened to turn the Archchancellor’s scarf into a snake. I still don’t know if you’d  _ actually  _ have been able to do it, but the look on his face was  _ hilarious. _ ”

Loki didn’t say anything, but her posture had softened, and though she was watching Sigyn with the same intensity, the fear wasn’t quite there.

“And… and there was that time, a few winter’s back, when you took me for a walk around the city. We watched the Alchemists’ Guild explode, again, I bought you a pie from Dibbler, then we threw it in the river when it started moving, and we stood outside the Operahouse making fun of the posh twats who were coming out. That was where-”

Sigyn trailed off and her silence said:  _ can I continue? do you feel like a stranger in your own life when I say these things, or will you let me tell you I love you in every way I can? _

“That was where...?” Loki repeated, and her words said:  _ I don’t remember what it’s like to feel safe anymore, and I don’t remember what you’re saying, but your words feel like coming in from the cold to sit by a roaring fire, so continue so I might pretend we are still happy. _

"You turned to me and asked- I remember your  _ exact  _ words- 'will you do me the honour of becoming my girlfriend', formal as anything, and I  _ laughed  _ and said you'd got it all wrong, that it would be  _ my  _ honour, to be able to be with you."

Lost in the memories, Sigyn smiled to herself. She didn't notice Loki's almost-smile in response, nor the way her eyes lit up at her own words.

"I didn't think I'd ever love you more than I did in that moment, but then every day since then you proved me wrong."

Slowly, Loki reached over, taking Sigyn's hands in her own.

"Can't erase me," she muttered, perhaps to herself, perhaps intending Sigyn to hear too.

"Can't unmake us."

Sigyn leaned forward, resting her head on Loki’s.

“I have to go soon. We have a plan - we’re going to fix this, I promise. But- I don’t have to go yet

They stayed like that, quietly, peacefully, able to ignore the train for at least a short while. Things weren’t perfect, but then things never are. At least now they were together.


	6. Prisoners and Problem-Causers

Vimes was discovering that investigating a crime that hadn't happened yet, and that was going to take place somewhere accelerating away rapidly,  _ and  _ may not even be illegal to begin with, was boring.

Nobby and Colon had returned from Odin's speech arguing about frogs, and Vimes had decided that for the sake of his sanity he wasn't going to get involved. If he returned home, Sybil would make him take a break from work, so that wasn't an option either, and Carrot had expressly forbidden him from going out on patrol, probably because Sybil was working in league with him.

...He could make a start at all the paperwork piled on his desk? And also the paperwork lying in piles all over the floor, because sometimes he needed to make space on the desk for more, newer, pieces of paper.

Vimes picked up the closest sheet, trying and failing to repress a yawn. He took a glance at the rows of numbers, and put it straight back down on a different pile.

There… there  _ was  _ a final option he could try.

He didn’t  _ want  _ to, especially. But….

The prisoners in the cells currently might know something.

For some context: prisoners are in and out of the cells in the Watchhouse all the time, not least because it’s somewhere dry to sleep and, whilst the food is by no accounts  _ good,  _ it’s better than boiled boots again. These prisoners were no different - there were three of them, and it was a coin toss each day as to whether or not they’d be in the cell when you went to check on them on account of them escaping all the time. Admittedly, the Watchhouse wasn't all that difficult to break out of, but it was the  _ principle  _ of the thing. Even worse, they weren't supposed to keep  _ breaking back in. _

Vimes. Hated. Them.

No. He wasn't going to go. He had better things to do. Maybe he  _ would  _ go back home after all. Anything other than go talk to the prisoners. Anything at all.

*

The prisoners were in their cell, which was a surprise in itself.

“Good morning, Commander Vimes!” Marius said, far too cheerfully. 

“Von Raum,” he muttered. This was a bad idea. If he turned around, he could leave, get a warm drink, maybe even join in on Colon and Nobby’s argument about frogs.

“I need your help,” he said, instead of doing any of that. 

“Is it about Odin’s train?” Raphaella asked

Vimes frowned. How had she known that?

“How did you know that?”   
  


“Given your known distaste for us,” Ivy piped up from the far corner, and Vimes startled at her voice. “It is the only event with a greater than 30% chance of it bringing you here.”

More numbers. It was like the universe was conspiring to ensure that, no matter what Vimes tried, he’d run into some numbers. Maybe he should pay a visit to the Temple of Small Gods and see if there was any holy entity about that he could yell at.

“Yes. Well- I  _ do  _ want to know about the train.”

Marius grinned, a dangerous glint in his eyes.

“Well then! We shall tell you-”

He raised his violin up to his chin, nodding to the other two as he opened his mouth to start singing and- 

Where the  _ fuck  _ had he had got that violin from? Why was he suddenly singing? Vimes had never claimed to be genre-savvy but this was  _ not  _ a musical and even if it was - if some god  _ really  _ had it out for him - he would stop it being a musical as quickly as he physically could.

“Shut up!” he tried, but if anything the singing got louder. And- did Marius just  _ wink  _ at him?

“SHUT UP” he shouted, louder. “ENOUGH OF THE SINGING. I AM  _ SICK  _ OF THE SINGING.”

Then a very cruel, very effective idea came to him. “I’ll tell Nobby you’re giving violin lessons.”

That made them shut up. For one, any expensive items in the possession of Nobby Nobbs would shortly  _ not  _ be in his possession any more, whilst Nobby himself would magically find himself richer by a good few dollars.

Raphaella elbowed Marius, hard, and at last he put his violin away... somewhere. Vimes didn’t see where and decided that he didn’t need to know.

“Just tell me,” he sighed.

“If you’re going to be like  _ that, _ ” Marius began, “you can just get a newspaper like everyo-”

“Bingely bingely beep!” interrupted something stored in Vimes’ shirt pocket.

Vimes groaned, and fished the Dis-Organiser out.

Much like public transport, a Dis-Organiser (sold as an Organiser) is an excellent idea. About the size of a large pocket watch, and with a little imp inside powering it, it has a wide range of functions; including keeping track of your appointments, notifying you of anything interesting happening, and saying fun facts.

“Ten-oh-three ay em, talk with the prisoners!” said the imp cheerily.

Vimes shook it, hard.

“You don’t need to notify me of something going on in the present.”

“It’s one of my fifteen available functions, Your Name Here!”

A Dis-Organiser is an excellent idea, sold by people who are paid to lie to other people about the things they’re selling. It has a wide range of functions, most of which involve apologising for how badly it does the other functions.

“Can I have a look at that?” Ivy asked.

And, despite that fact that Vimes would have gladly thrown it into the next ocean he came across, the suspicious bastard in him didn’t want to hand it over.

“Why?”

“If you give it to her,” offered Raphaella, “she’ll be focusing on that, and you’ll only have to deal with the two of us.”

Vimes couldn’t exactly argue with that. He handed the damned thing over, and Ivy clapped in excitement.

“So.” He made no attempt to sound anything other than fed up. “What do you know of Odin’s train?”

“Not much.”

Marius began counting on his fingers.

“It’s powered by magic, the only people on it are wizards or students from the Unseen University, and- Raph what am I missing?”

“Odin’s a bitch?”

“Well  _ yes  _ but wasn’t there something else?”

“She can’t do speeches?” 

“No she can’t. I thought you had a grudging respect for Odin, because, quote, ‘us evil science ladies need to stick together’?”

“I never called myself  _ ev-” _

Raphaella was interrupted by Vimes’ heavy sigh. They both turned to him, but he just waved a hand in a ‘go on’ gesture.

“No, no, don’t mind me. You continue your debate. It’s not like there’s something up with the train that I need to find out before something worse happens. I’m sure your opinions on Odin are of far more import-”

“Bingely bingely beep!”

“If that thing goes off one more time I’m throwing it against a wall,” Vimes snapped.

He took the Dis-Organiser from where Ivy offered him it, and turned it over in his hands.

“What did you do to it?”

“I re-tuned it slightly, so it should be better at picking up the story now.”

“That means nothing to me, but you can’t have made it function worse than it already did.” 

He shook it again.

“Alright. What’ve I got coming up?”

The imp, pretty dizzy after being shaken so much, took a moment to glare at him. Then it cleared its throat.

“The Ratatosk Express will approach the village of Heim Dale at three-fourteen pee em. At three-twenty pee em, Thor and Sigyn will enter the engine room, the one place where the students were never allowed to go.

“At three twenty-one pee em, they will find Kvasir, the engine, but an engine with a fancy name is not the  _ only  _ thing powering this train."

A glance at the prisoners told Vimes that they recognised these names as much as he did, which is to say, not at all.

“Between three twenty-one and three twenty-six pee em, Sigyn will try and unhook the engine from the magic running through the train in the mistaken belief that she is assisting. Thor will pull levers and throw switches, seemingly at random, desperately trying to do something,  _ anything  _ to help."

The imp paused, probably for dramatic effect.

“And at exactly three twenty-seven pee em, something will go very, very wrong.”


	7. RAGNARÖK AND ROLL

The Ratatosk Express sped towards the tiny hamlet of Heim Dale. Everything seemed to be running according to plan - according to multiple plans, in fact. Sigyn passed messages of hope and revolution around her group; Odin watched the countryside fly past, faster than anyone would have thought possible before; and the magic powering the train looped through the engine, round the wheels, over the tracks, and back again, over and over and over and over.

And then, at 3:27pm local time, something went very, very wrong.

It started, as these things often do, not with a bang, but with a slight tearing at the seams of reality. If you'd looked out of the window at just the right angle, maybe you'd have been lucky (or, well, unlucky) enough to see the rip in the sky, behind which lay rainbow fizzing static and the shadows cast by awful, twisting  _ Things  _ that claw at the outsides of our universe, desperate to get in.

For a moment, that was it. Then, steadily, the fabric of the Jumper of Reality started to unravel…

  
  


*

Slowly- a wicked claw scrabbled at the rip.

Slowly- the gap widened, the static casting its shifting light over the landscape.

Slowly- another rip opened up, then another, and then one more and one more and then- 

Quickly now- and quicker still, the static spilling up out from wherever lies Beyond and don't look out the window now- Heim Dale's gone, destroyed, perhaps, or transported, and you wonder which is worse. The train still rattles ever onward but the static outside doesn't move with it. Where are you going- does it even matter? Does "where" still have meaning in the not-place, onboard the train going nowhere and everywhere, guaranteed to reach its destination fast fast fast! On you go, mile after mile after mile after- 

Screeching. Growling. Roaring.

The Things are here.

Things that feed off magic, they can't exist in this universe but they  _ want  _ to because they want to feed and drain dry, and the Express was like a beacon for them, a bright neon sign advertising a free-for-all buffet, the biggest in the world. Of course they came, ripping and rending and tearing.

Run for your life because your screams mingle with the squamous beings crawling the walls and their cries echo in the corner of your dreams and there's nowhere nowhere  _ nowhere  _ left to run to-

And cosmic madness reigns.

  
  


*

  
  


Something wizards learn very quickly is that casting a fireball is always an answer. It's very rarely the  _ correct  _ answer, and often causes more problems than there were at the start, but no other spell matches the aesthetic of lobbing a huge hot ball of fire at the thing, things, or Things being an issue.

The faculty of the Unseen University were firm believers in the healing powers of fireballs. They'd clustered together in one compartment, and in a show of camaraderieship never seen before, and likely never to be seen again, they were working together to toss spells of flaming destruction at the Things attacking from all sides.

" _ Yah! _ " the University Dean yelled, throwing a glowing green globule of goop at someThing with far too many eyes and too few legs. 

It absorbed the spell, and just kept coming.

Because the thing was, the wizards were working together to blast the Things with spells,  _ none of which were having any effect. _

The Archchancellor was thinking. It was quite a slow process, hampered by him having to duck and weave around claws, tentacles, and appendages he  _ really  _ didn't want to think about.

Why weren't their spells working? Why was that chair on fire, but not the Thing right on top of it? Where had all the blasted students disappeared off to?

Then he stopped. A thought had happened.

"They're  _ Things,  _ men!"

The Dean stopped in his enthusiastic firing of lightning.

"Are they now, Archchancellor?" he asked, nastily.

"Not just any old things, capital-T Things. Haven't you ever read about them?"

"Have  _ you? _ " the Dean replied, knowing full well the Archchancellor regarded books with the level of suspicion usually reserved for letters promising to make you rich, if you just send your address and the small fee of 500 dollars to this perfectly-legitimate-thank-you-very-much-don't-tell-the-Watch house.

The Dean had, in fact, read about Things. They existed just outside of this reality, and were desperate to get in though they couldn’t survive long in our world - not without eating ma-

_ Things ate magic. _

"Stop using spells!" he shouted, at the exact same time as the Archchancellor, and they glared at each other.

"The more magic we fire at them, the stronger they'll get!" the Archchancellor shouted again, before the Dean could get any more funny ideas about who was  _ really  _ in charge here.

The Dean rolled his eyes, then took his long pointy wizard's hat off his head, readying it like a baseball bat. Vaguely, the Archchancellor wondered if he should be concerned at how eager certain members of his faculty were to join in a fight.

...

It'd be fine, probably.

The Dean swatted a squamous Thing, hard.

"These look like those swear beasts we fought that time, don't they? Right nasty buggers they were."

A sudden and fearful silence fell upon the assembled wizards. Once bitten twice shy, the saying goes, or in this case "you get attacked by creatures that pop into existence each time you swear, and from there on in you can never say fuck the same again".

When nothing new appeared on account of the Dean's swearing, the wizards breathed a sigh of relief. There was still a train carriage full of squamous things to be contended with, yes, but at least they didn't have to be polite about it.

"Swear to your heart's content, gentlemen!" shouted the Archchancellor, hacking at a set of tentacles with his staff.

"MOTHERFUCK," the Lecturer in Recent Runes yelled cheerfully, taking a run up and booting something slimy across the carriage. It landed with a wet squelch on the Bursar's face, and he gibbered slightly.

All thoughts of the students had long been cast from their minds.

*

  
  


Loki was remembering as she ran

Something about the magic crackling sharp in the air, perhaps, something about the way the static hissed in the back of her mind had broken whatever block Odin had put in there. She remembered now. She remembered it all.

And she knew what it would take to finally stop the Express.

Forcing her way past a wall of slime slick flesh, she tried to avoid breathing in the rotten stench of Things.

She just had to find Sigyn. When she found Sigyn- well…

If it came to it, at least they could die together.

Loki's thoughts were going in so many directions at once that she didn't even notice the man until she walked right into him.

“Damn- my ap-” she would have said, at which point her brain would have caught up with the sight before her. As it was, Loki managed to save time on the whole sudden realisation business by suddenly realising who it was she’d crashed into  _ before  _ opening her mouth.

“...Thor?” she asked, because having a realisation doesn’t necessarily mean you find yourself believing it. “Thor- Thor, don’t I know you?”

Thor looked as shocked as Loki felt. It seemed like he hadn't quite reached the 'verbalise your utter bafflement' stage, though.

"Weren't we-" Loki stopped, hesitated, tried again, "Weren't we friends?"

At last, he nodded, slowly at first then faster, more sure, as he finally comprehended what -  _ who  _ \- he was seeing.

"Once, yes. Do you remember us, Loki?"

"Enough."

She opened her arms, and Thor pulled her into a tight hug. They were both covered in gore and ooze, Loki was unnaturally cold to touch and Thor was slick with sweat, but it was the best hug Loki had received in a good long while.

“Where are you going from here?”

Thor hesitated, but only briefly.

“To find Odin. To make her pay,” he replied, voice full of venom. Then he softened again. “What about you?”

There was no doubt in Loki’s mind.

“I need to find Sigyn. I- I know how to derail the train, and it should drive the Things away too.”

Thor pulled back so he could look Sigyn in the face. He sighed.

“I trust you, ‘course I do. Be safe.”

Loki grinned.

“I always am-”   
  


“Not true”

“-rude!

“You try and be safe too. Make sure to give Odin exactly what she deserves.”

Thor disentangled himself fully, and brandished the engineer’s hammer he’d picked up. It was caked in bits of Thing - he clearly knew how to use it.

“Don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

  
  


*

  
  


Thor, bleeding from a hundred wounds, kicked down the door to Odin’s carriage. It could have almost given him deja vu, were it not for the Things crawling up the walls and the static hissing at the edges of his thoughts.

In front of him, what once was Odin laughed.

Her body broken and shifting, bloody limbs growing grasping from her chest, as she who once styled herself a professor was transformed by the very same Things she led into this world.

“What have you  _ done _ ?” Thor spat.

“I have given us an ending!” Odin gestured around her with far too many arms. “One befitting a story such as ours - Things that consume the very force we seek to control!”

Thor circled her, keeping his distance - for now.

“This was planned. You knew it’d happen.”

“When I first built this Express, dragging the University kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat, I could not guess that this is where the whispered promises I dreamt of would lead. But now we are here, and we will feed the great Things that we cannot hope to understand.”

Odin was melting into the train - or perhaps the train was growing up to join with her, metal wrapping itself around what might have been her legs. She shimmered and split, her body barely able to hold itself together.

“You’re mad-”

She interrupted him with a bark of laughter.

“Sanity has no meaning in this place.”   
When Odin continued, her voice echoed sharp and cutting.

“I am the ending and the beginning both. Our world will fall apart around as the Things take what is rightfully theirs, their promises I first heard when we built these engines so long ago. All shall know we drive towards our finale, and none shall run from their fate.”

“No,” was all Thor said, readying his hammer.

“Killing me will not stop the train.”

“I don’t care.”

He charged.

Wounded as he was, this was not a fight he could win. But every window with a hammer is also an emergency exit.

Staggering, he approached the glass window of her carriage, raising his weapon one last time.

And the static claimed them both.

  
  


*

  
  


The Things ignored Loki as she made her way towards the engine room - they knew there was more magic and better feeding elsewhere. Inside, she finds Sigyn, sitting on the floor in despair. Loki touched her shoulder gently.

“Sigyn- my love.”

They embraced, tears flowing freely.

“Sigyn love, I know how we stop this.”

She kissed the top of Loki’s head.

“What is it?”

Loki took a shaking breath, and explained.

Magic ran through the engines, powering the whole train. If she could just change its route - cause it to pass through  _ herself,  _ amplifying it with her own powers, she would create a beacon irresistible to any Thing. They’d come flocking, but, by forming this beacon, she’d be draining the engines of all that powered it. The Things would have no choice but to leave, or to be left starving in this realm.

“They’d be destroyed,” said Sigyn, and Loki nodded, “but so would we, wouldn’t we? No-one can cope with that much power running through them, not for long.”

Loki took her girlfriend’s hands.

“Love- Sigyn I’m sorry. We’ve had so little time together and now I’m asking this of you-”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Sigyn interrupted. “The lives we shared have led us here, and I  _ want  _ to help you with this. I won’t leave you again, not this time.”

Together, they uncoupled the carriages behind them. Loki laid her hand upon the engines and at once her vision blurred, shifting rainbow hues seeping in at the edges. The magic burned in her veins - blue hot and it hurt, gods it  _ hurt  _ so much...

The train carriage shook - magic that had once been spread through the whole train straining against the sudden confinement. Drawing closer was the screeching and chattering of Things, deprived of any food elsewhere and flocking to the strongest source of magic for miles around.

And then the pain abated as Sigyn threaded her hand through Loki’s, holding it tight. Whatever was to come, they were by each others’ sides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagined this Odin looking somewhat like [this](https://share-cdn.picrew.me/app/share/202011/25624_SNtFSmuf.png) (warning for gore and body horror, and the image was created using [this picrew](https://picrew.me/image_maker/25624))
> 
> Also not to go on a full tangent here, but I think it's funny how much my writing style changes throughout this fic. Like, Pratchett didn't ever really write eldritch horror or romance on the same level as Loki and Sigyn, and comparing how I wrote those bits to, say, Odin's speech chapter, I find the differences incredibly funny dfgdfhgf


	8. Endings and Escapees

There is always a moment of calm, after the tragedy has occurred but before its shockwaves have reached the rest of the world. Soon, the wizards will realise where the front part of their train has gone. Soon, the Ankh-Morpork City Watch will fight for control of the investigations with the local forces, and things will get ugly indeed. Soon, the Press will get their hands on the story and retell it to anyone who'll buy the newspaper - though their version _still_ won't contain a banging guitar line in the background of Odin's speech.

But for now...

The engine room of the Ratatosk Express (Former) lay in a smoking pile of melted and warped metal. There was no sign of the hungry and squamous Things that had overrun the train so recently.

There were, however, four figures among the wreckage.

Loki lay slumped against Sigyn, whose arm was wrapped around her girlfriend's shoulders. Thor paced in circles, tossing and catching his hammer.

And all three of them were slightly translucent by virtue of being more than a little dead.

The fourth person present, who just so happened to be a tall skeleton with a wickedly sharp scythe and twin blue flames where his eyes should have been, watched them curiously.

WHY DID YOU DO IT?

Death asked at last.

Thor laughed with no real humour.

"Which bit?"

Loki tried to bounce a pebble off his head, but her ghostly hand went straight through. She sighed, shifting so she could be even closer to Sigyn.

"Thor, be nice. 

"If not us, then who? And don't bother," she continued quickly, "saying the other wizards. You see how long it took them to realise their fireballs were just making the Things stronger? By the time they'd have figured out how to stop the train, we'd all have been dead or worse."

YOU'RE DEAD NOW,

Death pointed out.

Loki just hummed sleepily, not bothering to offer further elaboration.

Sigyn smiled at her fondly.

"My girlfriend gets like this when she's tired."

THE DEAD DON'T GET TIRED.

Loki raised a lazy hand.

"This dead does."

Death rolled his eyes impressively well for a being with no eyeballs. He opened his mouth again to speak, but Thor got there first.

"Got an actual answer for you, Bones."

BONES?

Thor ignored him.

"For vengeance. For the fact that Odin could do this for so long because everyone else found it easier to look away. Wasn't planning to kill her, but those Things had wormed themselves so deep inside her mind she was falling apart anyway. That what you want to hear?"

This was a long speech by Thor's standards, and the other three fell silent for a while, considering it.

"Well in that case," Loki piped up, "I did it for love. When I started remembering, the first thing that came back to me was the feeling of love. I couldn't have told you Sigyn's full name, I didn't remember what it was like to have her warmth against me - but if I knew one thing, I knew I loved her. So I had to find her."

AND,

Death mused,

MAYBE THAT WAS ENOUGH TO BE WORTH IT. 

He looked to Sigyn, expecting a third answer from her, but she just shook her head.

"What happens next?" she asked him instead.

Death paused.

I DON'T KNOW. THERE IS A DESERT, AND A SKY FULL OF STARS, AND THE PEACE THAT COMES FROM EXISTING QUIETLY ALONGSIDE EVERYONE WHO CAME BEFORE. AND THEN…

He shrugged.

IT'S BEYOND MY POWER.

Sigyn shifted, resting her head against Loki's.

"Will we stay together? Not- not in the big cosmic sense or whatever, but will _we_ stay together?"

FUNNILY ENOUGH, I STILL DON-

Death stopped. He'd suddenly been struck by the mental image of Loki and Sigyn, hand in hand, Thor behind them and making no effort to hide the weapon he still held - the three of them facing down whichever god of the afterlife was unfortunate enough to be on duty that day. Maybe it would turn out to be a memory of the future, maybe not, but he had no doubt that, if it came to it, the three of them would win.

ACTUALLY, I RATHER THINK YOU WILL.

  
  


*

  
  


Nobby sidled down into the cells. He'd heard Vimes mention that von Raum was giving violin lessons, and he figured anyone stupid enough to do that here _deserved_ to have their instrument nicked.

The prisoners' cell, when he got there, was empty.

Well- empty of _people_ anyway. In the middle of the floor was left a note written on some cheerful pink paper.

Nobby picked it up carefully, being automatically suspicious of most forms of writing. It was some sort of pre written thank you note, with places to fill in the gaps, most of which had been left empty.

"We have had a bracket n close bracket bracket delete as appropriate close bracket insert adjective stay at name of hotel exclamation mark,"

he read out slowly, not one of nature’s punctuation-users.

"Our favourite part was colon the look on Vimes' face when we started singing exclamation mark. To improve comma you should colon let us play our music comma and maybe you could come with us for a meal one time question mark. Overall comma we rate this stay a 6 out of ten exclamation mark."

He turned it over. On the back, a little smiley face had been drawn.

  
"Mr Vimes," he groaned, "is going to go _spare_ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! Thank you to everyone who read this and left kudos and comments, you're all fantastic!
> 
> Find me on tumblr [regicidal-defenestration](https://regicidal-defenestration.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
